I guess the cat is out of the bag. "Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus's EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device - codenamed 'Cloudbook' - will ship with the Google Apps-oriented 'gOS' Linux distribution early next year."

One of the most attractive things about the EEE is the flash storage. I don't care if it's less space; silent, rugged, energy-efficient solid state is what I want for a small laptop. It's not my desktop replacement, and if it were, I suppose I could just hook up an external USB hard drive.

The problem is that the Eee's battery life isn't all that spectacular in the first place. The Via chip will probably be more efficient than the Celeron, and thus offset the HD battery usage. Perhaps even surpass the Eee.